Adhesive compositions based on 2-cyanoacrylates may be used as single-part liquid adhesives for bonding a variety of materials. Examples of materials to which adhesive bonds can be formed by use of 2-cyanoacrylate adhesives include metals, plastics, glass and rubbers, and such materials are met with as parts of precision instruments and household articles. It has also been proposed to use cyanoacrylate based adhesives for bonding blood vessels, living tissue in surgical operations, and vegetable tissue in grafting.
Although adhesive compositions based on 2-cyanoacrylates are potentially suitable for use in a wide variety of applications, 2-cyanoacrylate monomers tend to be very low viscosity materials and their fluidity makes their application difficult to control, for certain applications. Therefore, it is frequently necessary to provide means of controlling the viscosity of 2-cyanoacrylate based adhesive compositions, and various viscosity modifiers or thickeners have been proposed for this purpose.